Pierce Brosnan makes the leap into the crowded world of prestige TV set in the wild west in his new AMC series, The Son. Based on the Pulitzer prize-nominated novel by Philipp Meyer, The Son is set in Texas and follows the life of Eli McCullough along dual timelines (did someone say Westworld?) – one kicks off in 1849 with him as a young man and the other in 1915 where he’s become worldly wise, slightly grizzled and magnificently bearded. Later-life Eli is the patriarch of a family that has a failing cattle farm near the US-Mexico border and dreams of striking it rich with oil. He’s ruthless, bloody-minded and probably thinks compassion is something found in steam engines. If this sounds similar to the anti-hero archetype – think Don Draper or Nucky Thompson – it’s because it is.

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Young Eli is played by Jacob Lofland, whose rashness ultimately leads to a group of Comanche warriors taking him as a slave. The Comanches are led by Toshaway, played by Zahn McClarnon who you might recognize from Fargo. Unlike that show, which revels in its invention and innovation, The Son is diligent in its efforts to check off every prestige TV and western cliche. We get scenes of Young Eli being weak and humiliated, then gaining the respect of the Comanches, before he becomes the “dark” anti-hero played by Brosnan.

Amid the Comanche there’s a beautiful young woman – Prairie Flower played by Elizabeth Francis – who somewhat unbelievably forsakes all the accomplished men in her community to fall into bed with the powerless white outsider, who looks like he’s barely out of puberty. After a thawing of relations between Eli and the Comanche he’s faced with a decision: choose the interests of the tribe over other white people or turn his back on the Comanche? It’s a well-trodden narrative and ones that looks particularly facile when put in the context of, say, Westworld or Deadwood, which tried – and some would argue succeeded spectacularly – to reshape one of the most overused formats in TV and film history.

Ultimately, the show’s insistence on clinging to the same overrepresented, white male perspective is where it fails repeatedly in each timeline. The Son has several women that I imagine were conceived as “strong female characters” that are never developed beyond the sassy cliche that Thandie Newton’s Maeve in Westworld dismantled, to become fully rounded characters. For instance, it’s evident that, had she been given the chance, Paola Nuñez could have done far more with her character, Maria, the daughter of the wealthy, Mexican American cattle rancher whose land neighbors the McCullough’s.

She’s the daughter who demands her father be a better man. But despite these bold personality traits, her character’s motives seem to be entirely driven by the fact she has a romantic past with Eli’s youngest son, Pete, who is married with three kids and spends almost every scene he’s in struggling with being the conscience his father doesn’t seem to have. Here’s hoping The Son undergoes a shift in the back half of its season that discovers the magic that made one describe the book it is based on as a “careful dissection of imperial power, our innate potential for moral courage and companionship”.